SQL Server high availability. Log shipping or replication, clustering or some other solution. It's a challenge and as companies grow more dependent on their databases, it's one that more and more DBAs face everyday. Paul Ibison has taken a look at how log shipping and replication can be compared in the quest for high availability.
Read more...

Some days the simplest things go wrong. On this particular day Andy tried to remove a column that was part of an article in a transactional publication, wound up in an inconsistent state that required a snapshot to fix. Deeper investigation reveals the cause and a work around.
Read more...

This article covers how to build the snapshot subscription without getting bogged down in too many low level details. You'll learn enough here to get started experimenting and get results. Depending on comments from you, we may ask Andy to move on to transactional replication or to dig deeper into snapshot options. Tell us what you think!
Read more...

Andy continues writing about replication, this week discussing the many options available when creating a snapshot publication. As we noted on his last article, this one may take longer than usual to load due the large number of images but we think the readability of having it all one page is worth while.
Read more...

We've asked Andy to put together some articles that tackle replication from a beginner perspective, a tutorial type approach PLUS comments on what you should or should not do. This week he covers the steps needed to set up a server for replication. More images than usual so the page may take a little longer to load, but we think worthwhile so that you can see every step along the way. Let us know what you think.
Read more...

Changing a replicated table in SQL 7 was a lot of work. SQL 2000 offers some help, but in many cases it's not enough. This article by Andy Warren shows you which changes SQL 2000 will help you with and which ones it won't.
Read more...

This white paper was written by Alain Dumas, founder of Sunopis. Looks interesting. Looks like they sell a tool that does ETL, replication, data cleaning, and more. We haven't reviewed the product, just thought it was something that might be of interest to our readers
Read more...

There are times that you may find yourself on a project where you have one data source and need to publish to many subscribing databases. Often times, Replication is not looked at as a viable solution to achieving this goal. For this project, Demico and Lynn will demonstrate the way we utilized the Horizontal and Vertical partitioning capabilities that Microsoft has added to the Replication utility.
Read more...

Andy had a semi-disaster similar to the one he wrote about last year. Interesting to see the kinds of problems that happen to other people. This article raises some interesting points that are outside the scope of basic disaster recovery, looking at how/when to move databases to a different server and how to reduce the server load dynamically.
Read more...

Andy takes a look at the new book on DMO and likes what he sees - "great book for beginner and intermediate DMO users!". We've been supporters of DMO for a while and we're glad to see a new book on the subject. Read the review, add your comments, buy the book!
Read more...

All of do us regular backups. Ok, all of us SHOULD do regular backups. In this article Andy comments on why having a backup plan isn't enough and why you should look at some other options for when you need to fix data errors. This really speaks to the goal of minimizing down time using low tech, readily available solutions. If you're not interested yet, we'll add this - one of the alternatives he suggests is Microsoft Access!
Read more...

Now that Andy has converted Steve Jones to a DMO believer we asked him to spend some time discussing replication. In this kick off article he discussion snapshot replication at a very high level - and looking for reasons to use it. This article isn't about how to do snapshot replication, it's about whether you should.
Read more...

Back in April Steve Jones wrote up a disaster at work. Andy had one this week and wrote up the story too. Copy cat! Pretty soon everyone will be having a disaster and writing a story about it! Give these guys credit for letting you see what happens when it ALL goes bad. Disaster recovery is hard to sell and hard to do, reading the article might give you an idea that will save you some time and/or data one day.
Read more...

Andy says Windows Authentication "is bad". What? That's not what Microsoft says! Heck, that's not even what we say! Everyone knows NT authentication is the way to go. Then again, when was the last time Andy wrote an article that wasn't worth reading?! Read the article, rate it and add a comment - and automatically be entered in a drawing for a copy of SQL Server 2000 Performance Tuning donated by Microsoft Press.
Read more...

From this real-world case study, learn how you can boost SQL Server performance and scalability by off-loading reporting from your production SQL Server to a reporting server, using transactional replication.
Read more...

Last year Andy wrote about turning off the log reader as a way to reduce the overhead on a server, primarily when you have many logreaders running. In this follow up article he talks about the downside of using this technique and how the behavior of the logreader can be "tweaked" to make using non-continuous replication a little less of a headache.
Read more...

Middle tier applications often use a single database management system (DBMS) to store data, which can expose scaling limitations as the number of user requests increases. Caching, a technique used to increase application performance by copying data and then using the copied data in place of the original data, can dramatically increase the throughput (the number of application requests serviceable per unit time) and scalability of middle tier applications.
Read more...